How much Jesus Christ deserves to be loved by us, for the love he has shown us in his Passion
All the holiness and perfection of a soul consists in loving Jesus Christ, our God, our sovereign good, and our Savior. “The Father himself loveth you,” said Jesus himself, “because you have loved me” (John 16:27). “Some,” says St. Francis de Sales, “place perfection in austerity of life, others in prayer, others in the frequent use of the sacraments, others in almsgiving; but they deceive themselves: perfection consists in loving God with the whole heart.” The Apostle wrote: “Above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection” (Col. 3:14). It is charity that unites and preserves all the virtues that make a man perfect. Hence St. Augustine said: Ama, et fac quod vis—“Love, and do what you will”; for to a soul that loves God, love itself teaches it never to do anything that would displease him, and to do all that pleases him.
And does not God deserve all our love? He has loved us from eternity: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jer. 31:3). “O man,” says the Lord, “consider that I was the first to love you. You were not yet in the world, nor did the world itself yet exist, and already I loved you. As long as I have been God, I have loved you; since I have loved myself, I have loved you also.” Well, then, might that holy virgin St. Agnes answer, when earthly suitors were proposed to her who sought her love: “I am forestalled by another lover.” Go, she said, you lovers of this world, and cease to seek my love; my God was the first to love me, he has loved me from eternity; and so it is right that I give him all my affections, and love no other but him.
Seeing that men allow themselves to be drawn by gifts, God willed by means of his own gifts to win them to his love. So he said: “I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bands of love” (Osee 11:4): I will draw men to love me with those cords by which men let themselves be drawn, that is, with the bonds of love. Such indeed have been all the gifts God has made to man. After endowing him with a soul, with its powers in his own image—memory, understanding, and will—and with a body furnished with its senses, he created for him heaven and earth and so many other things, all for love of man: the heavens, the stars, the planets, the seas, the rivers, the fountains, the mountains, the plains, the metals, the fruits, and so many kinds of living creatures; all these things that they might serve man, and that man might love him in gratitude for so many gifts. “Heaven and earth,” cries St. Augustine, “and all things tell me to love you.” My Lord, he said, how many things I see on the earth and above the earth; all speak to me and exhort me to love you, for all tell me that you made them for love of me. The Abbot Rancé, founder of La Trappe, when from his hermitage he paused to gaze on the hills, the fountains, the birds, the flowers, the planets, the heavens, felt himself enkindled by each of these creatures to love the God who for love of him had created them.
In like manner St. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi, when she held some beautiful flower in her hand, felt herself kindled by it with love toward God, and would say: “Then my God thought from all eternity of creating this flower for love of me!” And so that flower became to her like an arrow of love, which sweetly wounded her and bound her more closely to God. St. Teresa, on the other hand, said that when she looked upon trees, fountains, brooks, the sea, or the meadows, all these fair creatures reproached her with her ingratitude in loving so little the Creator who had made them to be loved by her. It is related, too, that a devout solitary, walking through the countryside, thought that the little plants and flowers he met reproached him with his ingratitude toward God; so that with his staff he went striking them, saying: “Be silent, be silent; you call me ungrateful, you tell me that God created you for love of me and that I do not love him; but I have understood you now—be silent, be silent, reproach me no more.”
But God was not content to give us all these beautiful creatures. To win for himself all our love, he has gone so far as to give us his very self. The Eternal Father has gone so far as to give us his own only-begotten Son: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son” (John 3:16). Seeing that we were all dead and deprived of his grace through sin, what did he do? For the immense love—rather, as the Apostle writes, for the exceeding love he bore us—he sent his beloved Son to make satisfaction for us, and so to restore to us the life that sin had taken away: “For his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ” (Eph. 2:4–5). And in giving us the Son—not sparing the Son in order to spare us—together with the Son he has given us every good, his grace, his love, and paradise; for all these goods are certainly less than the Son: “He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how hath he not also, with him, given us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).
And so the Son too, for the love he bears us, has given himself wholly to us: “He loved us, and delivered himself for us” (Eph. 5:2). To redeem us from eternal death, and to win back for us the divine grace and the paradise we had lost, he became man and clothed himself in flesh like ours: “And the Word was made flesh” (John 1:14). Behold a God emptied of himself: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… and in habit found as a man” (Phil. 2:7). Behold the Lord of the world humbling himself to take the form of a servant, and submitting to all the miseries that other men endure.
But what is more astonishing is that he could well have saved us without dying and without suffering; yet no, he chose a life afflicted and despised, and a death bitter and shameful, even to dying upon a cross, the infamous gibbet appointed for malefactors: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). But why, when he could redeem us without suffering, did he will to choose death, and the death of the cross? To show us the love he bore us: “He loved us, and delivered himself for us” (Eph. 5:2). He loved us; and because he loved us, he gave himself up to sorrows, to shame, and to the most painful death that any man has ever suffered upon the earth.
Hence the great lover of Jesus Christ, St. Paul, was moved to say: “The charity of Christ presseth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). The Apostle meant that not so much what Jesus Christ has suffered, as the love he has shown us in suffering for us, obliges us and almost constrains us to love him. Let us hear what St. Francis de Sales says on this text: “Knowing that Jesus, true God, has loved us even to suffering death for us, and the death of the cross—is this not to have our hearts under a press, and to feel them pressed by force, and the love wrung from them by a violence that is the stronger the more lovable it is?” Then he adds: “Ah, why do we not cast ourselves upon Jesus crucified, to die on the cross with him who willed to die there for love of us? I will hold him, we ought to say, and I will never forsake him; I will die with him, and burn in the flames of his love. One same fire shall consume this divine Creator and his wretched creature. My Jesus gives himself wholly to me, and I give myself wholly to him. I will live and die upon his bosom; neither death nor life shall ever separate me from him. O eternal Love, my soul seeks you and chooses you eternally. Ah, come, Holy Spirit, and inflame our hearts with your love. To love, or to die! To die to every other love, in order to live to the love of Jesus. O Savior of our souls, grant that we may sing eternally: Long live Jesus whom I love; I love Jesus who lives and reigns forever and ever.”
So great was the love that Jesus Christ bore to men that it made him long for the hour of his death, to show them the affection he kept for them; so that during his life he kept saying: “I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). I have to be baptized with my own blood, and oh, how I feel myself pressed by the desire that the hour of my Passion may soon come, that man may thereby soon know the love I bear him! And therefore St. John, speaking of that night on which Jesus began his Passion, writes: “Jesus, knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to the Father, having loved his own… he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). The Redeemer called that hour his hour—his hour—because the time of his death was the time he had desired; for then he willed to give men the last proof of his love, dying for them upon a cross, consumed with sorrows.
But who could ever have induced a God to die, executed upon a gibbet, between two malefactors, with such ignominy to his divine majesty? “Who did this?” asks St. Bernard; and then he answers: Fecit amor, dignitatis nescius—“Love did it, that knows nothing of dignity.” Ah, love, when it is a question of making itself known, does not go seeking what most befits the dignity of the lover, but what most serves to manifest itself to the beloved. Well, then, might St. Francis of Paola, at the sight of the Crucified, cry out: “O charity! O charity! O charity!” And so all of us, beholding Jesus on the cross, ought, enkindled, to cry: “O love! O love! O love!”
Ah, if faith did not assure us of it, who could ever bring himself to believe that a God, all-powerful, most happy, and Lord of all, should have willed to love man so much that he seems to have gone out of himself for love of man? We have seen Wisdom itself, that is, the Eternal Word, made foolish through the excess of love he bore to men! So spoke St. Lawrence Justinian: “We have seen the Wise One made foolish through the excess of love.” The same was said by St. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi one day when, being in ecstasy, she took in her hands a wooden image of the Crucified, and then cried out: “Yes, my Jesus, you are mad with love. I say it, and I will always say it: Mad with love you are, my Jesus.” But no, says St. Dionysius the Areopagite, it is not madness, but the usual effect of divine love, to make the lover go out of himself in order to give himself wholly to the object loved: “Divine love works ecstasy.”
Oh, if men would but stop to consider, beholding Jesus crucified, the affection he has borne to each one of them! “And with what love,” said St. Francis de Sales, “should we not be kindled at the sight of the flames that are in the breast of the Redeemer! And oh, what a happiness, to be able to be burned by that same fire with which our God burns! And what a joy, to be united to God with the chains of love!” St. Bonaventure called the wounds of Jesus Christ wounds that wound the most unfeeling hearts, and that inflame the most frozen souls. Oh, how many loving arrows go forth from those wounds, that pierce the hardest hearts! Oh, what flames go forth from the burning heart of Jesus Christ, that inflame the coldest hearts! Oh, how many chains go forth from that wounded side, that bind the most unconquerable hearts!
The Venerable John of Avila, who was so enamored of Jesus Christ that in all his sermons he never failed to speak of the love that Jesus Christ bears us, wrote, in a treatise of his on the love this most loving Redeemer has for men, these glowing sentiments, which, because they are so beautiful, I have wished to insert here. He speaks thus:
“You, O Redeemer, loved man in such a way that whoever considers this love cannot but love you; for your love does violence to hearts, as the Apostle says: ‘The charity of Christ presseth us.’ The origin of the love of Jesus Christ toward men is his charity toward God. Therefore he said on the Thursday of the Supper: ‘That the world may know that I love the Father, arise, let us go hence.’ But whither? To die for men upon the cross.
“No understanding can comprehend how this fire burns in the Heart of Jesus Christ. As it was commanded him to suffer one death, had it been commanded him to suffer a thousand, he had love enough to suffer them all. And if what was laid upon him to suffer for all men had been laid upon him for the salvation of one alone, he would have done it for that one as he did it for all. And as he stood three hours upon the cross, had it been necessary to remain there until the day of judgment, he had love enough to do it. So that Jesus Christ loved far more than he suffered. O divine love, how much greater you were than you appeared! You appeared great without, for so many wounds and bruises preach to us a great love; but they do not tell all its greatness; it was greater within than it appeared without. That was but a spark that leaped forth from that great sea of immense love.
“This is the greatest sign of love, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends; but it was not a sign sufficient for Jesus Christ to express his love.
“This love is what makes good souls go out of themselves, and leaves them astonished when it is given them to know it. Hence comes the feeling of the heart on fire, the desire of martyrdom, the rejoicing in suffering, the gladness upon the red-hot gridirons, the walking on burning coals as though they were roses, the longing for torments, the joy in what the world fears, and the embracing of what the world abhors. St. Ambrose says that the soul espoused to Jesus Christ upon the cross holds nothing more glorious than to bear with her the marks of the Crucified.
“Now how shall I repay you, O my Lover, for this your love? It is fitting that blood be repaid with blood. May I see myself stained with this blood, and nailed upon this cross. O holy cross, receive me too upon you. Widen yourself, O crown, that I may set my head within you. O nails, leave those innocent hands of my Lord, and pierce my heart with compassion and with love. Therefore, my Jesus, St. Paul says that you died: to make yourself master of the living and the dead, not by chastisements, but by love: ‘For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living’ (Rom. 14:9).
“O thief of hearts, the force of your love has broken even our hearts, so hard. You have inflamed the whole world with your love. O most wise Lord, inebriate our hearts with this wine, burn them with this fire, wound them with this arrow of your love. This your cross is already a bow that wounds hearts. Let all the world know that I have my heart wounded. O my sweetest Love, what have you done? You came to heal me, and you have wounded me? You came to teach me to live, and you have made me as one mad? O most wise madness, may I never live without you. Lord, all that I behold on the cross invites me to love: the wood, the figure, the wounds of your body, and above all your love invites me to love you, and never to forget you.”
But to attain the perfect love of Jesus Christ, we must take the means to it. These are the means taught us by St. Thomas Aquinas:
First, to keep a continual remembrance of the divine benefits, general and particular.
Second, to consider the infinite goodness of God, who is ever in the act of doing us good, and ever loves us, and seeks our love in return.
Third, to avoid with diligence every least thing that would displease him.
Fourth, to renounce all the goods of sense of this earth: riches, honors, and the pleasures of the senses.
Father Tauler adds that it is also a great means for obtaining the perfect love of Jesus Christ to meditate upon his holy Passion.
Who can deny that devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ is, of all devotions, the most useful, the most tender, the most dear to God, the one that most consoles sinners and most inflames loving souls? And what is the source of so many goods, if not the Passion of Jesus Christ? What gives us the hope of pardon, strength against temptations, the confidence of going to paradise? What brings us so many lights of truth, so many loving calls, so many impulses to change our life, so many desires to give ourselves to God, if not the Passion of Jesus Christ? With good reason, then, did the Apostle call him excommunicate who does not love Jesus Christ: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema” (1 Cor. 16:22).
St. Bonaventure says that there is no devotion more apt to sanctify a soul than the meditation of the Passion of Jesus Christ; and so he counsels us to meditate every day upon the Passion, if we would advance in divine love: “If you would profit, meditate daily on the Passion of the Lord; for nothing works in the soul so universal a holiness as the meditation of the Passion of Christ.” And before him St. Augustine said, as Bustis relates, that one tear shed for the memory of the Passion is worth more than a weekly fast on bread. Therefore the saints have always occupied themselves in considering the sorrows of Jesus Christ. St. Francis of Assisi by this means became a seraph. One day he was found by a gentleman weeping and crying with a loud voice; asked why, “I weep,” he answered, “for the sorrows and the ignominies of my Lord; and what most makes me weep is that men, for whom he has suffered so much, live forgetful of him.” And saying this, he redoubled his tears, so that the man too began to weep. When the saint heard a lamb bleat, or saw any other thing that renewed in him the memory of the suffering Jesus, at once he renewed his tears. Another time, when he was sick, someone told him he should have some devout book read to him: “My book,” he answered, “is Jesus crucified.” And therefore he did nothing but exhort his friars to think always on the Passion of Jesus Christ.
Tiepoli writes: “He who does not fall in love with God at the sight of Jesus dead upon the cross will never fall in love at all.”
Affections and Prayers
O Eternal Word, you have spent thirty-three years in toils and hardship; you have given your blood and your life to save men; in a word, you have spared nothing to make yourself loved by them; and how then are there found men who know this and do not love you? O God, among these thankless ones I am one. I see the wrong I have done you; my Jesus, have pity on me. I offer you this ungrateful heart of mine: ungrateful, but penitent. Yes, I repent above every evil, my dear Redeemer, of having despised you. I repent, and I love you with my whole soul.
O my soul, love a God bound like a criminal for you, a God scourged like a slave for you, a God made a mock-king for you, a God at last dead upon a cross like a malefactor for you.
Yes, my Savior, my God, I love you, I love you. Ah, remind me always of how much you have suffered for me, that I may never again forget to love you.
Cords that bound Jesus, bind me to Jesus; thorns that crowned Jesus, wound me with love toward Jesus; nails that pierced Jesus, nail me to the cross of Jesus, that I may live and die united with Jesus.
O blood of Jesus, inebriate me with holy love. O death of Jesus, make me die to every affection of earth. Pierced feet of my Lord, to you I cling; deliver me from the hell I have deserved.
My Jesus, in hell I could love you no more; but I wish to love you always. Beloved Savior, save me, bind me to yourself, and permit not that I should ever lose you again.
O refuge of sinners, Mary, Mother of my Savior, help a sinner who wishes to love God, and who commends himself to you; succor me for the love you bear to Jesus Christ.